You don’t have to be mad to create conspiracy theories, but it certainly helps, new research suggests.

Just believing in them indicates you are more likely to be paranoid or mentally ill, a Victoria University study shows.

Widely held conspiracy theories range from harmless ones, such as the belief that the Moon landings were faked, to more dangerous delusions such as the one in Nigeria that polio vaccines were a Western plot to sterilise people. That led to vaccination crews being murdered and thousands dying from disease.

Clinical psychologist Darshani Kumareswaran is delving in to the psychology of conspiracy belief, and has found some believers are likely to endorse far-fetched plots in an effort to make sense of chaotic situations beyond their control.

Kumareswaran, who graduated from Victoria with a PhD in psychology this week, wanted to find out what made people more likely to believe in, or come up with, conspiracy theories – and whether the process was linked to mental illness.

Avid conspiracy theorists can put themselves under intense psychological strain with their tendency towards paranoid thinking and delusional beliefs, causing mental strain even when a conspiracy theory turns out to be a verified plot.

She also looked behind the common public image of the conspiracy theorist as a crackpot.

Despite evidence of verified conspiracies, such as the Watergate scandal, the public viewed conspiracy theorists in as negative a light as they did convicted criminals, she said.

“For the label to be so negatively rated by the public is quite a powerful finding.”

Study participants were asked to recall a situation in which they had no control, describe it in detail, and write it down. They were then put in a “psychological space” in which they felt powerlessness and were given 24 pictures that looked like snowy television screens.

Half featured obscured objects such as a chair or tent, the other half nothing.

Those who scored highly on a form of psychopathology known as schizotypy were more likely to see an object in the images where there was none, indicating they were more likely to make connections between unrelated things.

“I also found that someone who creates conspiracy theories is more likely to have some form of psychopathology, or mental illness such as . . .

Since there now seems to be a conspiracy theory for even the most mundane of topics, it’s not surprising that the medical profession is currently swimming in them. In a field rife with accusations of corporate profiteering, poorly understood diseases, and so-called deadly vaccines, conspiracy theorists have found themselves a fertile home.

10 • HIV Doesn’t Exist

Closely connected to the crazy theory that HIV is man-made is the belief that the virus that causes Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) does not exist at all. According to this theory, AIDS is really caused by a combination of sexual behavior, recreational drug use, poor sanitation, and a number of unrelated diseases. The denial movement was pioneered by molecular biologist Peter Duesberg, who became the one of the earliest and most vocal proponents of HIV’s non-existence. Even when comprehensive research proved otherwise, Duesberg merely modified his claims to posit that HIV was a “harmless passenger virus” and that other diseases caused AIDS.

While it would be easy to write off the theory as the ramblings of a lunatic fringe group, the damage they’ve done has been extensive. In South Africa, thousands of AIDS sufferers have lost their lives thanks to President Thabo Mbeki making AIDS denialism an official government policy. Incidentally, Peter Duesberg was one of Mbeki’s advisers.

9 • Fluoridation Is Suppressing Our Third Eye

Aside from the countless conspiracy theories linking water fluoridation to mind-control experiments, some conspiracy theorists have blamed the substance for damaging our pineal gland and leaving us unable to open our Third Eye. As a result, fluoridation has left us unable to reach the next stage of human evolution. The theory’s proponents believe that the pineal gland plays a much more important role than just producing melatonin (the hormone responsible for regulating sleep). According to them, having full control of our Third Eye would allow us to fully access our psychic and spiritual powers.

But who could be behind such a nefarious scheme to stop us from evolving? Apparently, it boils down to the list of the usual suspects including the New World Order, the Illuminati, world governments, and the religious establishment, all of whom supposedly want people to remain in the dark about their true potential.

8 • The Obesity Epidemic Is A Myth

Although we know that obesity is one of the fastest-growing health problems in the world, some have claimed that the whole epidemic is nothing more than a myth. Despite research revealing that obese people now officially outnumber the world’s malnourished and hungry, conspiracy theorists have derided talk of an epidemic as an obvious ruse to sell more weight-loss drugs.

Collaborating with public health agencies and the media, pharmaceutical companies have supposedly tricked people into believing that diet pills are the only way for them to lose weight. Apparently, they’ve also managed to dupe governments into advocating anti-obesity and “fat shaming” so that people will be conditioned into buying their products. Interestingly, some of the most active voices fighting against anti-obesity measures include advocacy groups funded by the food industry.

7 • Chemtrails Are Behind Morgellons Disease

Some of the most popular conspiracy theories out there concern “chemtrails,” condensation trails left by planes which supposedly contain chemical or biological agents. Depending on the theory, contrails are either used to control the population or alter the weather. They’ve also been blamed for causing the controversial dermatological condition known as Morgellons disease.

The current scientific consensus is that Morgellons does not actually exist and that those who claim to have it are either delusional or suffering from some other known condition. However, conspiracy theorists have insisted that contrails are the true culprits behind the spread of the condition. Mysterious fibers found on supposed sufferers have subsequently been identified as harmless cotton from their clothing, but that hasn’t dampened the conspiracy theory. In fact, believers now claim that contrails contain nanotechnology which burrows into the human body, thereby causing the condition.

Funnyman Jim Carrey stopped by Jimmy Kimmel Live last night to promote his new movie Dumb and Dumber To. However, it seemed Carrey had other plans as he greeted the audience with the infamous Illuminati triangle (you know, the one that Jay Z throws up?) but with his tongue sticking out the center.

Carrey revealed that he was “sick and tired of the lies” and stated that it was the “all-mocking tongue” of the Illuminati.

Somewhat satirical, Carrey explained to the audience – “People on TV have been hired by the government to throw you off track, to distract you, to make you laugh and make you happy and docile so you don’t know what’s really going on. ”

Midst his rant, Carrey answered his phone (which was apparently a call from the Illuminati), and when he returned to speaking to Kimmel, his voice was robotic and droll.

The now “controlled” Carrey no longer wanted to expose the Illuminati, but to inform Kimmel and the audience about his new “iPhone 6plus” and the release of Dumb and Dumber To this weekend.

As we’ve mentioned before, conspiracy theories can be found anywhere on the planet and can encompass just about any subject matter under the Sun. They are used to explain any mysterious event, albeit with a reasoning that can only be described as certifiably insane. Of course, the conspirators are almost always identified as belonging to a cabal of rich and powerful individuals, which brings us to the topic of depopulation. Overpopulation, exhaustion of natural resources, or evil designs are but a few of the reasons why depopulation conspiracy theories still occupy a special place in the minds of the paranoid.

10 • Pacte De Famine

Contrary to the popular notion that they are products of the American mind, depopulation conspiracy theories and their beginnings should actually be credited to the French, with their infamous Pacte de Famine (Famine Pact) in the late 18th century. During that period, a combination of unfavorable weather and relatively poor farming methods produced a severe food shortage across many regions of France, resulting in the raising of the prices of food and other basic commodities.

Due to this unfortunate event, many of the middle and lower classes—especially the peasants—believed that the aristocracy or some other shadowy group was secretly controlling the price of grains to control their burgeoning population. The paranoia led to the Flour War, a collective term for the series of riots and revolts that broke out in the affected areas. Incidentally, this atmosphere of fear and distrust helped to kick-start the French Revolution.

9 • The Human Genome Project Is A Eugenics Program

James Dewey Watson, American molecular biologist, geneticist and zoologist, best known as one of the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA in 1953. Shared the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. (Wikipedia)

We’ve previously discussed the Human Genome Project and the innumerable benefits it has brought to the human race. However, such a massive, well-funded program is not without its controversies. For one, there is a conspiracy theory which says that the project is actually nothing more than a cover for eugenicists to develop better methods of exterminating those people whom they have deemed inferior and unfit for this planet.

According to this conspiracy, the end goal of the project is the identification and elimination of “bad genes” across the world. Mapping out the human genome would allow the supposed conspirators to build better diseases and other biological weapons to subtly sterilize and wipe out inferior races. Even drugs would be customized to eliminate the targeted groups around the globe. As to the identity of the conspirators, it’s anyone’s guess. Of course, the usual suspects would include the CIA, the military, the Illuminati, or any other “evil” group.

8 • Global Warming Is An Excuse To Depopulate The World

By itself, global warming is already a very controversial topic. Its very existence is a constant subject of heated debate between affirmers and deniers. As if that isn’t enough, a few crazies in the deniers’ camp have stated that the campaign to stop global warming is really just a ruse to implement a depopulation program.

According to them, the crusade to cut back on fossil fuels and substances harmful to the environment would actually mean decreasing large-scale food and energy production throughout the world. This man-made famine and poverty would then result in a worldwide genocide and the destruction of the global economy, making it easier for whoever is behind the scheme to implement a New World Order. They claim that the ban on DDTs has already resulted in the deaths of more than 100 million people, while the ban on CFCs is killing 40 million people annually.

Who are the Anunnaki? What is the Planet Nibiru? Click the image to find out.

The best conspiracy theories are like enchanting mazes of logic whose thresholds, once crossed, are hard to return from. As ludicrous as they can appear from a distance, the closer you get, the stronger their gravity and the greater the danger of being sucked in. How else to describe the extraordinary rebirth of David Icke? Best known to some as the former BBC sports presenter who appeared on Wogan in a turquoise tracksuit implying he might be the son of God, to the post-Twin Towers generation he’s the visionary master of conspiracy, performing his unscripted 10-hour lecture about the secret forces that rule the world to sell-out crowds at Wembley Arena.

A 2011 BBC poll found that 14 per cent of Britons believed 9/11 was an inside job. Just as conspiracy websites are flourishing, so are those dedicated to undermining them, such as Snopes, The Skeptic’s Dictionary and Skeptoid. The number one debunking podcast on iTunes, The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe, claims a weekly listenership of 120,000 and tens of millions of downloads since its 2005 launch.

Icke often describes his work as “dot connecting”. But connecting dots is precisely how all sorts of mistakes about reality arise. “Our brains evolved to spot patterns in the environment and weave them into coherent stories,” says psychologist and conspiracy theory expert Dr Rob Brotherton. “We’re all conspiracy theorists because of the way our minds work. It’s how we make sense of the world. But it’s easy to connect dots that shouldn’t be connected.”

Confirmation bias: Selective thinking whereby one tends to notice and to look for what confirms one’s beliefs, and to ignore, not look for, or undervalue the relevance of what contradicts one’s beliefs.

So humans are rampant dodgy dot connectors, and they also suffer from an array of biases that make them susceptible to faulty belief. “We’re biased towards seeing intentions in the world, to think things were done deliberately instead of being chaotic,” says Dr Brotherton.

“There’s also a proportionality bias, so we want to think that when something big happens in the world it has a big explanation. In the case of JFK, you don’t want to believe some guy you’ve never heard of killed the most important man in the world and changed the course of history. Another is confirmation bias – when we get an idea in our head it’s very easy to find evidence that seems to support it. It takes a very unusual mind to de-convince itself. We’re made to believe.”

And some of the theories out there at the moment really take some believing. Here are five: . . .

On Tuesday, the political fate of America was once again put to a vote. But for the millions of Americans who believe in lizard people, this vote had bigger implications — like thwarting an ongoing plot of world domination.

The idea of shape-shifting lizards taking human forms in a plot to rule America and the world has become one of the most majestic and marvelous conspiracy theories created by mankind (or lizardkind, if you will). In 2008, “lizard people” found its way onto the Minnesota’s midterm ballot with some controversy.

As pundits extrapolate on what the Republican win in the midterms means for the country, there are people around this country who hope their votes did something crucial — kept the country safe from lizard people for the next few years.

Here is a brief guide to this world of lizard people true believers.

What is a lizard person?

It’s just what it sounds like.

Lizard people are cold-blooded humanoid reptilians who have the power to shape-shift into human form. According to David Icke, a new-age philosopher and one of the most prominent theorists in the lizard people game, these creatures have had their claws in humankind since ancient time, and world leaders like Queen Elizabeth, George W. Bush, the Clintons, and Bob Hope are all lizard people.

“Encroaching on other conspiracy theorists’ territory, Icke even claims that the lizards are behind secret societies like the Freemasons and the Illuminati,” Time reported.

Icke’s 1998 book, The Biggest Secret, is considered an important tome in lizard people theory.

Wait. People actually believe in this stuff?

Yes.

How many Americans believe in lizard people?

Back in April of 2013, Public Policy Polling conducted a poll about conspiracy theories like aliens, an impostor Paul McCartney, and, of course, lizard people. And the polling organization found that 4 percent of Americans believe in lizard people, while another 7 percent were unsure. Taken to its absurd extreme, that would imply around 12 million Americans, Philip Bump, a lizard person scholar and writer at the Washington Post, found. (Public Policy Polling is a serious outlet, but it’s also known for some trolly polls, so these results have to be taken with a grain of salt.)

Keep in mind that this might not be counting all the people who, in their heart of hearts, believe that lizard people exist but are nervous that they will be found out if they publicly disclose their beliefs.

How do those who believe in lizard people know when someone is a lizard person?

There are many differing theories. If you look at the forums on Icke’s site, there are numerous posts either telling people how to spot lizard people or asking how to pick a lizard person out from the crowd.

Bump, one of the top lizard person journalists in the field, made a handy guide last year that culled lizard-person identifiers. Here’s the list of lizard person tells:

Hello initiates and welcome to module one of the Illumicorp video training course. I would like to officially welcome you as a member of the team.

You’ve joined our organization at perhaps the most exciting point in our long history. Our founders shared a passionate dream. To transform this country, and eventually the whole world to one cohesive organization.

This presentation is designed to enlighten you about our organization’s goals and achievements. As your guide, I will help to answer some basic questions you might have about Illumicorp, and familiarize you with the valuable role you will play in helping us reach our prime objective. So please, take a tour with me as we march together towards an exciting new world.

In 1871, a man named Albert Pike published a book called Morals and Dogma.

Conspiracists call this book a manifesto, a primary doctrine for Masons and, contained within its pages is absolute proof Albert Pike was a Satanist who wrote secret Satan worship into the degrees of the Scottish Rite.

Who is Albert Pike? What is his book about? What was the extent of his influence? Do Freemasons worship Satan?

The items on this varied list may not all warrant heightened vigilance and tin foil hats, but better safe than sorry. So we’re all better prepared for welcoming the Lizard People, when they finally choose to reveal themselves, and assimilating to the New World Order, here are some of the best conspiracy theories and urban legends in the U.S.

10 • Area 51, probably underground, Nev.

Arguably, the country’s most famous conspiracy theory is focused on this remote part of Edwards Air Force Base in Southern Nevada. Also known as Groom Lake, it’s assumed the base is used to test aircraft and weapons systems. The air space overhead is absolutely restricted. Even Air Force pilots aren’t allowed to breach the perimeter. The extraordinary secrecy surrounding the base has fueled several Area 51 conspiracy theories over the years ranging from a lab/prison for studying aliens (both living and dead), a meeting place for Earthlings and aliens working in tandem on various projects, reverse engineering and testing of captured/recovered alien technology, developing a weather control system, time travel and teleportation technology and much more. All that said, nothing can be certain as everything that occurs in Area 51 is classified as “Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information.” The CIA didn’t publicly acknowledge the existence of the base until July 2013.

9 • Denver Airport, Colo.

A detail of a mural in Denver International Airport, subject of much conspiracy theorist interest. A plea for peace, or a plan for future martial law?

Another conspiracy theory layer cake spot is Denver International Airport. That it was built while Denver had a perfectly good airport much closer to the city is the jumping off point for these theories. (For the record, experts have pointed out that the runway layout at the old airport was no longer efficient enough for the increased traffic.) It’s believed that building the new airport allowed for the secret construction of an underground headquarters for the Illuminati, or the New World Order, or the Neo-Nazis, or the Lizard People and so on. The vaguely Swastika-shaped runways, the (admittedly) disturbing murals and sculptures, and odd words engraved in the floor also fuel the theories. Furthermore, there is the question of funding. A stone in the terminal says the airport was funded by “The New World Airport Commission,” a nebulous entity, sanely theorized to be a group of local businesses, though many claim it doesn’t exist.

8 • UFO cover-up, Roswell, N.M.

Though it’s now mainly fueled by local businesses wanting to cash in on tourist interest, the (alleged!) Roswell UFO incident of 1947 is the most popular (alleged!) UFO cover-up of all time and still merits time and energy among conspiracy theorists and movie/TV writers. Various people claim that a spacecraft with alien occupants crashed on a ranch near Roswell in June or July 1947, which was quietly hauled away for study, possibly by our friends at Area 51. The Air Force reported at the time that the object was a surveillance balloon. The conspiracy chatter didn’t flare up until 1978 when Major Jesse Marcel, who was involved with the recovery of the debris, gave an interview describing a spacecraft crash cover-up by the military. Since then additional witnesses have emerged, describing the cover-up and alien autopsies. These days, even passionate pro-UFO advocates generally dismiss Roswell as a hoax.

7 • Grassy knoll in Dallas, Texas

The grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza, where the 1963 assasination of US President John F. Kennedy took place in Dallas.

The Warren Commission concluded that there was no conspiracy involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963. However, after Lee Harvey Oswald was killed by Jack Ruby, an event that also brims with conspiracy, the theories that Oswald didn’t act alone or maybe wasn’t involved at all started flying. The situation was exacerbated in 1979 when the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations announced “…a high probability that two gunmen fired at [the] President.” Furthermore, while he was living in Belarus, it’s said Oswald was such a terrible shot that friends were afraid to go hunting with him. The dazzling list of conspiracy theories put forward at one point or another involve the collusion of one or more parties including the CIA, the FBI and/or FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, the Mafia, anti-Castro Cuban exile groups, Castro himself, then Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, and the KGB.

6 • Kensington Runestone, Runestone Museum in Alexandria, Minn.

Kensington Runestone

Evidence that Scandinavian explorers pushed as far as the Midwest of the future United States in the 14th century or a 19th-century hoax? The Kensington Runestone is a 200 lb slab of greywacke inscribed with runes on the face and side. The story goes the stone was found in 1898 in the rural township of Solem, Minnesota (it gets its name from Kensington, a nearby settlement) by Swedish immigrant Olof Olsson Ohman. The Stone appears to describe an expedition of Norwegians and Swedes who camped in the area, then retreated to their boat at “the inland sea” after 10 were slaughtered by unknown assailants. Runologists and linguistic experts overwhelming agree that the language used on the stone is too modern (circa the 19th century, coincidentally) and didn’t match other writing samples from the 1300s. However, the legend persists, being occasionally revived with new evidence and arguments, some as recently the 1990s.

The only unsolved case of air piracy in U.S. history was perpetrated by an unidentified man who the media came to call “D. B. Cooper.” (The hijacker purchased his ticket using the alias “Dan Cooper.”) On November 24, 1971, Cooper hijacked a passenger plane (a Boeing 727) during a Portland-Seattle flight. Claiming he had a bomb, he made his ransom plans known to the crew. On the ground in Seattle, Cooper released the passengers after officials gave him the requested $200,000 (equivalent to $1,160,000 today) and two parachutes. With only Cooper and the crew aboard, the plane then took off heading for Mexico. When they stopped in Reno to refuel, Cooper was gone, having jumped from the rear stairs while the plane was likely still over Washington State. Cooper was never found and it’s widely believe he couldn’t have possibly survived the fall, over remote mountainous wilderness, at night, wearing a trench coat and loafers, no helmet, into an initial wind chill at the airplane’s altitude of “70∞ F. The FBI investigation into the case remains open to this day.

Contrails are the wispy white clouds of frozen water vapor that streak across the sky in the wake of jet engines. But according to 17 percent of 18 to 29-year-olds—my generation—contrails are actually “chemtrails,” poisonous chemicals sprayed by the government for sinister reasons. As the world becomes an increasingly scary and complex place with no simple answers, the temptation to create narratives explaining all of its evil will grow. And here lies the heart of the modern conspiracy theory. Yet when fantasy overtakes reality, progress suffers.

Whenever anything bad happens in the world today, from September 11th to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, there is a growing gaggle quick to cry, “wake up sheeple!” Tragedies like the Boston Marathon bombing and September 11th are of course “false flag” operations by a sinister cabal—the CIA, New World Order, Neocons, Illuminati, Jews, and Rothchilds are the usual suspects—but so are natural disasters. Twisters in the Midwest: Weather weapons being tested by the Pentagon. The Indian Ocean Tsunami: Caused by a nuclear weapon detonated in a deep ocean trench. Even the Earthquake in Haiti was the result of malicious meddling. As one blogger alerts us, “If you just assume it was a natural disaster, you are probably not current with what technology is capable of.” Omitted were any credentials explaining how the writer is more knowledgeable on technology than the rest of us.

But who cares? Isn’t questioning big government and corporate dominance over our lives a good thing? Sure it is. But losing the ability to distinguish between the reality and paranoia won’t do us any good.

Let’s look at three hot topics on conspiracy websites: vaccines, genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and fluoride—or as one website put it, the three biggest human rights tragedies of our time.

Far from a tragedy, vaccines have saved millions of lives. We are currently living in what UNICEF calls the Child Survival Revolution. Children no longer perish from dreadful, agonizing diseases as they have throughout most of history. Vaccinations are a major reason why. But good news is usually no news, which is why headlines such as “Plane Lands Safely” or “Swimmer Not Attacked by Shark” don’t exist, yet their opposites certainly do. As a result, society tends to underappreciate progress. Perhaps this explains why the loud voices behind the anti-vaccine movement . . .

Supporters of conspiracy peddler Alex Jones are FURIOUS that I dared to note his dismissal of the Apollo 11 mission. Talk about a lunatic fringe.

The worst thing about being a moon landing denier is, apparently, the part where reporters call you out for labeling Apollo 11 as some kind of false flag operation.When I wrote a story about Kentucky Senator Rand Paul’s relationship with his father—and the impact it might have on his chances of getting the Republican presidential nomination—I expected some pushback. But not like this.

My characterization of radio host Alex Jones (a frequent promoter of the Pauls) sparked outrage among his devotees. Specifically, they got all rage-y because I referred to Jones as a “moon landing denier.” A weird thing to quibble about, considering he is a moon landing denier.

Alex Jones, I wrote, is “a noted conspiracy theorist who spreads his message on his syndicated radio show and on his website, Infowars.com. Jones is a moon landing denier who believes the government acted as a guiding hand for the September 11 attacks and the Oklahoma City bombing, buys into the New World Order—the theory that a group of so-called elites are conspiring to form a singular, totalitarian global government has accused American pop stars of being purveyors of Illuminati mind control.”

.@Olivianuzzi, in your hit piece, you label Alex Jones a “moon landing denier,” when he has repeatedly said the opposite….1/2

@PrisonPlanet—aka Paul Joseph Watson—is editor-at-large of Infowars.com, Jones’ site. There is rich irony in having the editor of Infowars.com charge that your job is to “make up shit.” Infowars.com, for the uninitiated, is a very special place where ideas like the Super Bowl halftime show is an illuminati ritual, and that President Obama has called for a New World Order, are welcome. The website even sells iodine drops, called “Survival Shield,” at their official store.

Truther, a term that came from the 9/11 Truth movement, but has become more than just an ironic and demeaning term for 9/11 conspiracy theorists.

A Truther can be someone believes in conspiracy theories other than the 9/11 conspiracy theories.

With this in mind I’ve taken a look at these people, and while I’ve noticed alot of traits about them, I’ve narrowed it down to about five different things.

So here are five things I’ve noticed about Truthers:

5. It’s a broad and encompassing term.

For most people when they hear the word “Truther” they think of someone whom is apart of the 9/11 Truth movement, or just someone whom believes the myth that the US government, or Israel, or the Illuminati committed the 9/11 attacks. While this is true, “Truther” has become a more broad term and could include not just a member of the 9/11 Truth movement, but any conspiracy theory.

What a Truther really is is a type of conspiracy theorist that both claims they want to know the truth about a conspiracy theory, and then claims they already know what the truth is, but in reality it’s anything but the truth.

Think of this type of person as someone whom asks you where the nearest large body of water is and you tell them that there is a pond 100 feet behind them, but they don’t believe you and then tell you that nearest large body of water is two miles away, despite the fact that the pond is clearly behind them, and all they would have to do is turn around to see it. Even if they do turn around they’ll just insist that it’s not really a large body of water.

For anyone who has had a “conversation” with a Truther type of conspiracy theorist you probably already know what I’m talking about, but for those who don’t I’ll explain.

Truthers, when confronted with evidence and/or logical arguments that contradicts or disproves their conspiracy theories, will often claim that what is being presented to them is not enough evidence to disprove what they are claiming isn’t true, or that the evidence that you are presenting to them isn’t true, and in either case they will claim to need more.

When a skeptic gets into an argument with a Truther and they start doing this a person like myself will usually determine that either the Truther is too dumb to realize what they are doing, or too deluded to realize what they are doing, or are in serious denial and are trying to hold on to what they believe or want to believe is real, but somewhere in their minds they know they’re wrong.

Besides just “Moving the Goalposts” another tactic that Truthers like to use is…

3. They call everyone that disagrees with them a shill.

Truthers are under the assumption that they are right, and that everyone else who does not agree with is wrong. For those that continue to insist that the Truther is wrong then the Truther just seems to naturally assume the skeptic is either a sheep that has not “woken up” to “the truth” (their truth mind you) or someone who is being paid to say what they are saying.

I’ve recently written about conspiracy theories, which means I have been recently attacked by conspiracy theorists. I thought I’d take a moment to briefly reflect on the evolution of conspiracy theorist…

The conspiracy theorist is, of course, not a new breed of human. All the basic psychological building blocks of conspiracy thinking are inherent in the human psyche, including distrust of authority, wanting “inside information,” and real or imagined persecution-and, to be fair, often a dearth of critical thinking skills such as the ability (or desire) to separate anonymous rumor from established fact.

The conspiracy theory is at its heart a profoundly populist notion. It’s the common man demanding a peek behind the curtains of power-power in the form of information. Knowledge is power and information is the currency of conspiracists. For millennia there were no conspiracy theorists to speak of because most people had little or no access to independent information. News traveled very slowly from region to region, and anyway it didn’t really matter because there wasn’t much news anyway (“uncle Abraham’s cow died, more news as it happens”). Information and knowledge about the world came mostly from religious leaders. What went on in distant lands (or even neighboring countries) had little relevance to most people who spent their lives farming or fishing, living and dying without ever having strayed more than a few hundred miles from their birthplace.

The invention of the moveable type printing press was a boon to conspiracy theorists for the simple reason that books and knowledge was transportable. Instead of one source of knowledge there were dozens, or perhaps hundreds, and in some cases the authors had different viewpoints on the same subjects. As the old saying goes, a man with one watch knows what time it is, but a man with two watches is never sure. If two authors disagreed, then someone claiming to be an authority was wrong-or even perhaps intentionally deceptive and intentionally hiding a truth.

Modern technology helped give birth to the modern conspiracy theorist as well. Decades ago conspiracy theorists largely relied on short-wave radio and crude stapled-and-photocopied mailings to gain followers and spread their enlightened truths. In the 1980s personal computers allowed conspiracy writers to create much more professional publications-in appearance, if not content-as well as “underground” magazines. One fascinating exception is the curious case of the . . .

Sometimes, we want other people to do things, but those people don’t want to do those things. In many cases, people have tried to solve this problem with violence or other forms of direct coercion, but some craftier people have looked into the idea of mind control. Science has found little evidence that such techniques work, although conspiracy theorists would tell you that those scientists are in on the plot. Whether it is the Illuminati, the mysterious powers that be, or your nation’s government, there is someone out there with incredible, malevolent power working to control your every move, theorists claim, and there is nothing you can do to stop it.

10 • Facebook Is A Mind Control Plot

To many people, Facebook is just an annoying—if somewhat necessary—social tool, but some are convinced that it is far, far more than that. They believe that sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Digg came to prominence a little too easily. As such, they must have had backing from powerful media moguls like Rupert Murdoch as well as faceless government benefactors. In turn, the media promotes these sites to encourage the masses to publicly post about their lives, making it easier to spy on them. This theory also claims that part of the point of social media is to brainwash you into silence, so you will slowly conform to what those lurking in the shadows would prefer you to be.

Some people even think that the Facebook plot goes beyond simple social engineering. The Weekly World News claims that they talked to some “anonymous men” from the CIA, who divulged details of an operation planned for 2012. These nameless sources claim that data gathered from Facebook was being used to create mind-controlling applications that would compel users to do the CIA’s bidding, leading to total enslavement of the world’s population.

9 • Brainwashing During The Korean War

During the Korean War, many US soldiers were captured and kept as prisoners of war by the North Koreans. The North Koreans were known for being incredibly cruel to their prisoners, either killing them or simply letting them die from neglect. After the Chinese took over the prison camps, they maintained an iron grip on their prisoners but halted the unnecessary killing. Instead, they attempted to undermine prisoners’ beliefs in democracy and capitalism, often holding sessions with prisoners for the purpose of indoctrination.

After the war, many people were concerned about defectors, and the specter of Chinese brainwashing was raised. However, researchers found that the number of defectors was greatly exaggerated. Very few people collaborated with the Chinese in any meaningful way, and most of those who did were already sympathetic to their cause. In fact, experts believe that these so-called “brainwashing” techniques were merely a strategy for keeping prisoners busy, preventing them from organizing. Once the Chinese got their hands on the prison camp, no one escaped.

Despite this explanation, the conspiracies theories that the Chinese were experimenting with turning prisoners against their own country for dark and sinister purposes have persisted to this day. It could be argued that this conspiracy was the inspiration for many future theories about supposedly compromised former soldiers and spies.

8 • Jonestown Was A CIA Experiment

You already know that the Jonestown cult ended with an incredibly tragic mass suicide. Shortly before the events (which were caught on tape) that created the expression “don’t drink the Kool-Aid,” a congressman named Leo Ryan had arrived to investigate the cult but was gunned down shortly after disembarking his plane. Official sources claim that the attack was perpetrated by cultists from Jim Jones’s group, who chose their own destruction under his enigmatic influence, but some theorists are convinced that something far more shocking occurred.

The theorists claim that there were signs that the body count was initially inaccurate, leading them to believe that some tried to run away. Others claim that many of the cultists were murdered by cyanide poisoning, citing injection marks on the bodies that couldn’t have been reached without help. Along with the likelihood that the CIA had infiltrated the group for the purpose of investigation, this evidence has led to some very strange theories, such as the claim that the entire Jonestown cult was a camp set up by the CIA to test mind-controlling techniques. The theorists claim that the congressman was actually gunned down by the CIA, after which the camp was quickly cleansed so that the truth of their gruesome experiments didn’t get out.

It might seem odd to believe that the CIA was present after the recording of the massacre came to light, but some theorists think the audio tape was heavily edited. One theorist claims that the lack of proof is itself evidence of a conspiracy, explaining that the rumors about the CIA’s involvement in Jonestown are so crazy and unbelievable that the CIA must have planted them so you wouldn’t know the actual truth about what they did.

7 • Fluoride In Water Turns You Into Lobotomized Zombie

If you’ve ever watched Dr. Strangelove, you’ve heard the conspiracy theory that fluoride in the water is designed to sap and pollute all of your precious bodily fluids. Many people insist that fluoride is an attempt to poison the water, but the origins of these myths are stranger then you might think. The conspiracy theorists claim that the plot began in Nazi Germany, where Hitler and his top cabinet were looking for a strategy to control minds on a massive scale. They decided that fluoride would be great because, according to the theorists, it erodes your mental function and free-will as it slowly builds up in your body. Over time, you become a pawn for the powers that be.

Of course, as fluoridation spread, conspiracy theories and myths spread along with it. This has culminated in many conspiracy theorists pushing two theories that seem totally incompatible with each other. For instance, one theorist explains his theory of subtle mind control, going on to explain that fluoride quickly poisons your body as well. It seems like zombies aren’t very useful if they’re dead.

Howdy! I hope everyone’s summer is off to a swell start, and that, wherever this newsletter finds you, you are healthy, happy, and as intent as ever on clandestinely controlling every facet of global influence with the quiet and cruel fist of the élite.

It is an exciting time to be in the Illuminati! We have just welcomed a whole slew of wonderful new members into our family, all of whom look forward to meeting you at one of our bi-monthly meet-and-greets hosted by Rupert Murdoch, hitting the links for a round of golf on the recently reopened Clear Channel eighteen-hole course, or even just talking universal suppression of the common man over a highball in the newly refurbished NATO Oasis Lounge. And that’s just the beginning! So please do not hesitate to introduce yourself to our neophytes: Lupita Nyong’o, Ted Cruz, Michael Sam, Savannah Guthrie, and (yes, finally!) Blue Ivy Carter. Welcome, Fledgling Mercenaries of the New World Order!

But, first things first—I want to thank everyone for such a terrific turnout at our Viva La Revolución Fiesta Fundraiser back in March. I mean, wow! Go, team! With your help, we raised over 1.2 trillion dollars. Not too shabby! That money will go directly into bolstering bastions of religious influence in Latin America, pumping psychoactive carcinogens into domestic water supplies, and a long overdue paint job in the women’s locker room. Major props to Chuck Todd, Ludacris, and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for putting in so much time and effort, as well as Jamba Juice and the Banco Central de Chile for making the night possible. You guys literally rule!

Now, August may feel far away, but trust me, enlightened few, Family Fun Night is just around the corner. Remember, this year’s theme is “proletariat fools,” so please tell your kids to start picking out their favorite naïve peon for the costume contest. First prize is two hundred dollars cash and a future ambassadorship.

It’s difficult to imagine the kind of suffering the family of Grace McDonnell has endured. In some ways it feels disrespectful to even believe you can, given the enormity of what happened to them. The same can no doubt be said for the parents and loved ones of all the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting. And yet Grace’s parents, in particular, have been subjected not only to the relentless pain of losing their young daughter, but, recently, to the psychopathic whims of those who believe their child never existed in the first place — those who believe that she was some kind of phantasm concocted by faceless nefarious entities trying to pull a fast one on the American public for who knows what reason. These people, Sandy Hook truthers, are a unique product of our time: self-righteous fools full of misplaced intellectual certitude, bolstered by digital misinformation and the confederacy of like-minded lunatics social media can provide to them.

It was one of these truthers, these conspiracy theorists to whom notions like logic and reason are meaningless, who stole a sign placed at a memorial playground honoring Grace McDonnell in Mystic, Conn. last week. This same person then called Lynn McDonnell, Grace’s still-grieving mother, and told her that he was on to her — that her child had never been real and was merely part of the elaborate hoax that was Sandy Hook. When news of this began making the rounds, most decent people responded as you would expect them to: with visceral outrage. I myself wrote a piece here in response to the provocation that attempted to call-out the monster responsible. It was titled “An Open Letter To Whoever Stole a Sandy Hook Victim’s Memorial Sign” and through The Daily Banter and The Huffington Post it received a good amount of attention and circulation. It even received, it seems, the attention of the person it was aimed at — the person who actually stole the sign.

On Tuesday, my co-worker and friend Bob Cesca called me out of the blue to pass along a pretty disturbing bit of information. He said that he had just taken a call from a relative of his who lives in Northern Virginia, and that this relative told him that a stranger had just shown up at his doorstep demanding to see Bob. The man apparently was hoping to talk to Bob in an effort to contact me. He claimed to be the person who had stolen the sign from Grace McDonnell’s memorial playground. He gave Bob’s relative a local public phone number and asked him to get in contact with Bob who would then get in contact with me and tell me to give him a call. My first thought upon hearing this, after being concerned for the safety of Bob’s family, was that whoever had appeared out of the blue in Northern Virginia looking for me wasn’t really anyone I wanted to speak to. He may have made a surprising — and somewhat disconcerting — amount of effort to get in touch with me, but that didn’t mean he was anything more than a garden variety nutjob who’d read my piece and wanted to take credit for an unconscionable offense in the name of getting attention. But I took down the number and called it as soon as I hung up with Bob.

The person who answered the line sounded lucid, which made it all the more unnerving that what he began saying right off the bat was a panoply of conspiratorial crazy. He asked me if I’d heard of the Illuminati. If I knew about Bohemian Grove. If I understood that my ex-employer CNN was helping to usher in the New World Order. He kept referring to Anderson Cooper as my former boss, for some reason. (I never worked on Cooper’s show and even if I had he wouldn’t have technically been my boss.) He insisted that during CNN’s Sandy Hook coverage, Cooper had held up an owl, which he said was the symbol of Bohemian Grove and those working to bring about a one-world government. When I told him that I personally knew about a dozen people who covered Sandy Hook and were on-scene in the aftermath of the shooting, he demanded to know if those people had actually seen any bodies. He insisted, among other supposed giveaways, that none of the parents of the Sandy Hook victims cried on camera, proving that they either weren’t actually grieving or were paid actors.

“Well, they can’t help but smile,” I said. “You would too if you were a member of the Illuminati.”

Your current station in life has attracted the attention of the omnipotent rulers of the universe, us, the Illuminati. We would hereby like to invite you to join our order of infinite power. However, while we are inviting you, please realize turning down the “offer” is not possible. If you don’t join you will be sent to another dimension. A dimension where we have even more power and our invitations are even more threatening. We can do that.

You have undoubtedly heard whispers of our existence and deeds, but let us now reveal the true scope of our society. Every government power but one is under our command, and the one that isn’t is because we don’t want it. It can keep its banks, watches, and neutrality. We already have Switzerland.

The global economy is our plaything. Sometimes we flip a coin to determine whether or not coins should still have value. So far the world hasn’t had to deal with worthless coins, but statistically it’s only a matter of time before the arcade industry plummets. For you see, we can make any industry crumble at any given moment. You remember Beanie Babies, I’m sure. Due to us, they didn’t grow into Beanie Adults.

Movies, books, music, television, Music Television. No form of entertainment goes out to the unenlightened (we call them the IllumiNOTi, but it really only works in print since it sounds exactly the same as the Illuminati, so don’t say it out loud because we’ll know if you do) without first passing by our very elaborate desks. Subliminal messages are placed in each form of media so our rule is cleverly obscured from the public. Sure, a few conspiracy theories leak out, but who do you think leaks those theories? Hmmmm?

Really, who do you think leaks those theories? Because it’s not us, and it could threaten our existence. If we wanted it to, that is.

As a member of the Illuminati, we will use you as a vessel to do our bidding, but the benefits are well worth the extreme manipulation. With the attached membership card and mini keychain version you now possess the right to:

Walk onto any crime scene for any reason.

Skip lines at participating theme parks.

Give people jury duty.

Visit Switzerland.

Rename a star in most galaxies.

Remove one word from the dictionary.

Pass Go and collect $200, even if a card says not to.

Void past promises.

Be excluded from the laws of physics for a weekend (must request in advance).

Plus several others!

To acknowledge your acceptance of our mandatory invitation, please construct a rather large, rather golden pyramid on your front yard by tomorrow. If not constructed by tomorrow, we shall construct it for you, but we’d rather not have to do that. That’s time we could be spending on rigging middle school elections.

Be aware that if you attempt to show this letter to a member of the IllumiNOTi, its true message will be hidden. Instead it will appear to them as an invitation to your band’s next show at a local bar. Good luck then explaining to them how you don’t actually have a band and won’t be playing that night. So you see, you have no choice but to join.

We welcome you to the Illuminati and can’t wait to see you on a crime scene in the near future!

Hello initiates and welcome to module one of the Illumicorp video training course. I would like to officially welcome you as a member of the team.

You’ve joined our organization at perhaps the most exciting point in our long history. Our founders shared a passionate dream. To transform this country, and eventually the whole world to one cohesive organization.

This presentation is designed to enlighten you about our organization’s goals and achievements. As your guide, I will help to answer some basic questions you might have about Illumicorp, and familiarize you with the valuable role you will play in helping us reach our prime objective. So please, take a tour with me as we march together towards an exciting new world.

AIDS Denialism and the Anti-vaccination movement. Two groups that promote what many scientists and and doctors and skeptics alike consider to be the two most dangerous and deadly types of pseudoscience there is. In fact many skeptics have debated which one is more deadly!

Regardless of which one is more deadly, both of groups have an awful lot in common, and I’ve come up with about ten different things that both groups have in common:

They become very upset when someone questions their claims.

Anti-vaxxers and (as I have learned in the past few weeks) AIDS denialists really do not like it when someone questions what they are claiming. It doesn’t matter how nice you are to them, or how many facts you present to them, if you question their claims they will become very anger and start throwing around accusations and insults and start spamming people with a bunch of propaganda. This is of course annoying at best, and usually just something that gets them blocked on an internet site, but sometimes they take it to the next level and start doing the next thing on this list…

They use intimidation tactics.

AIDS Denialists and Anti-vaccers just seem to love to use intimidation tactics. Many times these intimidation tactics can be a benign type, like fear mongering and emotional appeal, which is used to sway people who might be on the edge of whether to believe them or not over to their side, or it can be an aggressive type, like death threats, or threats of lawsuits, or harassment, which is used in an attempt to frighten people away from questioning their claims, or to stop skeptics from debunking them.

They claim to do research.

Both AIDS Denialists and Anti-vaccers will often say that they have done their own research into the claims that they are making, and then through this so called research they will claim that they have come to a conclusion, and then proclaim that their conclusion is correct and that all others are incorrect. This is of course if they’re not simply claiming that the contradictory information isn’t apart of some “big pharma” disinformation propaganda campaign to “slander” Anti-vaccers and AIDS Denialists. And that’s another thing…

They think there is some kind of big pharma conspiracy.

Many Anti-vaccers and AIDS Denialists sincerely believe that not only what they believe is true, but they also believe that pharmaceutical companies also know “the truth” and that they’re keeping this so called truth hidden from the public so that people will keep buying their products, products that Anti-vaccers and AIDS Denialists believe that no one actually needs and sincerely believes is dangerous.

The reasons why these two groups claim that the pharmaceutical companies are keeping this so called “information” hidden is because if people knew “the truth” (i.e. their truth) that they would no longer buy anything from these pharmaceutical companies and they would go out of business. That, or according to some Anti-vaccers and AIDS Denialists, vaccines and HIV medication is part some kind of NWO/Illuminati plot.

They have no problem censoring people.

Ever make a comment on an Anti-vaccer’s or AIDS Denialist’s page or comment section for a Youtube video, and said comment either criticizes what they are saying, or debunks what they’re saying? Well then you probably know that not many people are going to see it because most administrators of such sites will usually remove such comments pretty quickly… and probably ban you. While this type of censorship is bad they do have every right to do it because they have every right to control the content that is on their webpages.

Some of these people will take the censorship of people who disagree with them to the next level and actually try to get entire webpages and videos from various social media websites removed, either by flagging a webpage or a group or a video as inappropriate or harassing, or even by sending out bogus DMCA takedown notices (which is illegal).

Had enough government rhetoric? Tired of following the sheeple? Fed up with believing what THEY want you to believe? Maybe it’s time to branch out and discover THE TRUTH.

If you’re new to the exciting world of conspiracy theories and just can’t decide which paranoid delusion best suits you, then why not use this handy flowchart to find your ideal conspiracy theory. Then you too can go and stick it to THE MAN.

(Click image for larger view)

Click image for larger view

“You know, this explains a lot. Because all my life, I’ve had this unaccountable feeling in my bones that something sinister was happening in the universe and that no one would tell me what it was.” Arthur Dent

NB This is not intended to be a complete list, but please don’t let that stop you commenting to let me know what I’ve missed off :)

It does seem a bit strange, doesn’t it? What could possibly explain the bottom portion of each photo being identical? It must be the illuminati or even aliens, right!

Well . . . not quite.

Thanks to the good people over at MetaBunk it turns out the culprit is a real yawner. As Mick West at MetaBunk explained, “It was actually a photocopier mishap. The two photos are obviously crops of a larger video frame, and are different sizes. One was on top of the other when the copies were made.”

Everyone loves a juicy conspiracy theory. Were the moon landings faked? Was Di’s death really an accident? Was there a second gunman on the grassy knoll? Are the royal family actually lizards?

Oh come on, don’t pretend none of these have crossed your mind.

David Runciman

They’ve all crossed David Runciman’s mind. Yes, even that one. Why? Because the politics professor is deep into a five-year project to work out where, when, how and why conspiracy theories fester – and looking in particular at the link between conspiracy and democracy.

“These days when people have conspiracy theories, they tend to think their government is behind it,” explains David. “A classic modern example is 9/11. There are conspiracy theorists who believe that either the American government knew it was going to happen and didn’t tell anyone, or organised it as an excuse to have war in Iraq; they say it’s about oil – all this kind of stuff.” Yet 100 years ago, people were perhaps more likely to blame, say, secret organisations or the banks if anything went wrong, “so we’re interested in trying to understand why people now think that government is the villain.

“We think it’s got something to do with frustrations with democracy: people thinking ‘Why isn’t the world working out the way we want it to? Government must be to blame!’”

Some even go a step further, claiming that there’s a ‘New World Order’: an international government run by the mysterious Bilderberg Group. “People believe that about 100 financiers and government representatives meet in secret, and decide what’s going to happen in the future,” he explains. “There’s a guy in America – a wealthy guy, who’s funding political candidates – who believes that the financial crash of 2008 was engineered in order to get Obama into the White House. They think that they’re manipulating the whole world.”

But why would anyone believe that? “Some people would say ‘Because they’re crazy, they’re paranoid, deluded’. But it’s not just that; it’s partly because they want an explanation for why things keep going wrong.

“There’s this thing: ‘Is history a cock-up or is it a conspiracy?’ And the real explanation is probably it’s a cock-up. Why have we been living through a financial crisis? Probably because people messed up! But conspiracy theorists don’t think that’s a good enough explanation. They think somebody must be behind it.”

And, adds David, there may occasionally be method in their madness: “It’s easy to say conspiracy theorists are people who have lost out in some way, but it’s so widespread! We’re looking at it through history, and it’s not just the ‘losers’, there are lots of different kinds of people who believe in these conspiracies. We want to know why.”

Is Bruno Mars a secret member of the Illuminati? Let’s look at the evidence.

In the “yes, he is” column, we have the fact that Mr. Mars headlined the 2014 Super Bowl Halftime show, which as everyone knows is a showcase for Illuminati members and their teachings, i.e. most of the celebrities. That’s convincing enough, so we’re not even going to bother to look at the arguments against the obvious conclusion that Mars’s performance was full of proof.

The story claimed NFL officials “just found clues that might prove the game was rigged. Officials believe the Broncos intentionally lost the championship in exchange for a large amount of money.” The fake report goes on to say that Super Bowl referee Terry McAulay overheard Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning asking Seahawks coach Pete Carroll, “When are you going to pay up?”

But there is no actual evidence that the game was fixed or rigged. If you scroll further down in the article, Huzlers identifies itself as “a combination of real shocking news and satire news to keep its visitors in a state of disbelief.”

The Super Bowl-is-rigged story falls into the satire category. There are no other reports suggesting that Super Bowl XLVIII, the first time the big game was played outdoors in a cold-weather city, was fixed.

But conspiracy theorists were out in full force trying to prove that the 2014 Super Bowl was staged. Yahoo user . . .

Step 1: Start with the premise that any tragic incident is a massive, intricate government conspiracy.

Step 2: Denounce any information presented by a mainstream, non-conspiracy source that directly counters the predetermined conspiracy narrative as corrupt and part of the conspiracy.

Step 3: Monitor these same mainstream sources for information that supports the predetermined conspiracy narrative, even if only remotely. Mainstream media reporting mistakes that support your conspiracy (or any conspiracy really) must be treated as rare moments of truth, glimpses inside the Matrix. Any mainstream media reports in favor of the conspiracy should be treated like the word of God. Spam that information everywhere.

Step 4: Imagination is the same thing as undeniable fact. There is nothing wrong with manipulating Youtube videos and using Photoshop to edit information to make it more obvious for the stupid sheeple to understand.

Step 5: Reject the skeptics to the conspiracy theories aggressively. Call them out for being sheep, shills, Cointelpro, paid agents, et cetera. Do not ever doubt yourself, because if you think they are any of these nouns, then it is undeniably true. After all, the conspiracy theory you are trying to wake the world up to is a fact. Only a sheep would think otherwise.

Step 6: Bring up the founding of the Federal Reserve, the Bay of Pigs, The Gulf of Tonkin, and other well known deceptive schemes by the government often (every conversation if need be.) These actions were confessed by government, therefore every other conspiracy theory is true!

Step 7: Cite declassified documents often, as they are invaluable. If the government reports that a secret program was started and ended 60 years ago- DO NOT BELIEVE THEM. The secret programs for sure are still occurring and are now more massive, sinister, and successful than before.

Step 8: Remember that most of witnesses and victims involved in conspiracy event are actors. Medical examiners, emergency responders, the police, reporters, they are almost all in on it. The innocent people caught up in the conspiracy were either killed or have been threatened by the conspirators and are too afraid to come forward (or they possibly never existed to begin with.)

Step 9: Blitz the world with the truth until everyone deletes you on Facebook or you are banned from your favorite web sites. Lay low for a period, regroup at your favorite alternative web sites, get encouragement and reinforcement from the other awakened truth seekers, and start the process all over again with a new conspiracy.

There are a lot of accusations leveled against the Illuminati, and out of all of those accusations I’ve noticed many things and traits about the group.

Now out of all of the things and traits that I have noticed about the Illuminati I’ve narrowed it down to five distinct things.

So here are five things that I’ve noticed about the Illuminati:

5 • They are the most patient people in the world.

The Illuminati has to be composed of some of the most patient people in the world. I say this because according to people who “investigate” the Illuminati (i.e. people who spend most of their free time watching or creating Youtube videos about the Illuminati, and listening to Alex Jones) have been doing stuff for years in order to get ready to take over the world, as well as kill 80%-90% of the population, and enslave everyone else.

Now as to how long the Illuminati have been plotting to take over the Earth no one (and by “no one” I mean conspiracy theorists) is really sure because no one is really sure how old the Illuminati is. Most conspiracy theorists say they’re around two and a half centuries old, although others say they’re as old as civilization, or even older, while others say they’re only about a century or so old.

Regardless of how old the Illuminati is, the fact that they have been allegedly at this taking over the world thing for a very long time clearly shows that they are composed of the world’s most patient individuals… or the world’s worst procrastinators.

Now I would think that there would be atleast a few people in the Illuminati who wants to really push forward in taking over the world. I say this because apparently the Illuminati has a huge membership, so I would think that there would be atleast a few ambitious individuals amongst themselves.

Infact when thinking about that huge membership of their’s it almost seems like that…

4 • Everyone is a part of the Illuminati.

According to conspiracy theorists there are a huge amount people (probably in the tens of millions) who are members, or atleast works for, the Illuminati. This alleged list includes actors, musicians (actually any celebrity really), rich people, politicians, high ranking military officers, anyone in the CIA, or FBI, or NSA, whistleblowers, religious leaders, myself and fellow skeptics, and even other conspiracy theorists. Heck, even Alex Jones whom constantly “speaks out” against the Illuminate has himself been accused of being a member of the Illuminati.

Now taking all of this “information” (a.k.a. accusations) into account by my estimates I believe there are only eight people in the world are not apart of the Illuminati…

I admit I might be a little off on my math there, but still that’s an awful lot of people who are apart of this super secret organization (so secret that there is no real proof of it’s existence).

Of course when you also consider how many people who are apart of this alleged secret organization it shouldn’t also be surprising to know that…

3 • They control everything.

According to many conspiracy theorists the Illuminati controls everything from the media, to the military, to the manufacturing industries, the airline industry (because how else are they going to spray chemtrails), the entertainment industry, the UN, the European Union, the Free Masons, the US government, law enforcement, major religions, minor religious, cults, the Democrats, the Republicans, the banks, most other governments, the oil industry, the pharmaceutical industry… the list just keeps going on and on.

Yes, he is a Reptilian

Firstly, I would like to admit that I am a true believer in David Icke’s reptilian theory. However, as time has passed, I’ve realized that Icke’s increasingly influenced by the very reptilians he believes he is fighting.

David Icke’s visual frequency is not attenuated to his own image; hence, he is unable to realize he is himself a reptilian. Theorists have speculated that Icke’s proven status as a reptilian is in fact a false-flag theory proposed by the reptilians to discredit him. This, of course, is a naive assumption buttressed only by a cult-like admiration for Icke’s manipulative, charismatic and altogether reptilian personality.

Look at his cold eyes, drained of all empathy.

Just beyond the thin veneer of Icke’s friendly exterior lies an emotionless obsession for control of others — the trademark of a reptilian. The cold stare in his eyes is an experience many have recounted upon close contact with his piercing and otherworldly gaze. He has absolutely no empathy for those he preaches to, and the ridiculous way he treats the reptilian threat is a classic example of hidden-in-plain-sight strategy. The saddest part of it all is that he, himself, does not — cannot–recognize his own reptilian nature.

On an interstitial plane between dimensions, the reptilians effectively have hidden their agenda through the vessel of Mr. Icke. As with others manipulated by this agenda, Mr. Icke himself is totally unaware of the possessors tainting his bloodline. His manipulative and viral reptilian fear, which he has made millions of dollars promoting, is precisely the favored tactic of the reptilians he so often rails against.

In essence, when one is afraid of the reptilians, they increasingly fall under the power of these MasonicIlluminati forces that permeate our corrupted bloodlines — perhaps our ape ancestors interbred with snakes, as hinted at in the biblical tale of Adam and Eve. No one has blood that is “clean” of reptilian influence, and the fear that has taken its grip on David Icke is proof that he, more than anyone else, is suffering from the pervasive and menacing power of reptilians.

Throughout this year there were a lot of new conspiracy theories going around. Some of them were scary. Some of them were weird. And some of them were just bizarre, absurd, and dumb to the point where one would either have to laugh at them, or pull their hair out in frustration.

The following list are ten of what I feel are the strangest and most bizarre and/or absurd conspiracy theories of 2013:

10. Robert Sarvis was a Democratic plant to help Terry McAuliffe win the Virginia gubernatorial election.

(Author’s note: being that I am from Virginia, I just felt that I had to mention this one)

In the 2013 Virginia gubernatorial election there were a lot of accusations that went back and forth (some true, some not) but one of the biggest accusation didn’t come during the election, but afterwards. The accusation that I’m talking about is the one that claims that Libertarian candidate Robert Sarvis was actually a shill or plant by the Democrats inorder to steal votes away from Republican candidate Ken Cuccinelli and to help guarantee victory for Terry McAuliffe.

Now as plausible as this may sound, there are just two problems with this: First there is no guarantee that the people who voted for Sarvis would have voted for Cuccinelli, and second most of the polls before the election showed that McAuliffe had an over 50% lead, and thus a spoiler candidate would not have been needed inorder to win. Also, besides those facts and the fact that there is no actual evidence that Sarvis was a Democratic plant, it’s just as likely that Sarvis actually took away votes from McAuliffe as it is from Cuccinelli.

While conspiracy theories against GMO foods are nothing new, what is new is that the Anti-GMO movement now seems to be focusing their claims on one company: Monsanto.

From what I can tell from their claims Monsanto pretty much controls the FDA, the farming industry, the food industry, Obama, the media, the U.S. Supreme Court, law enforcement, any blog that debunks the anti-GMO movement’s claims, all the science organizations, and that Monsanto is responsible for every atrocity committed in the world since World War Two.

According to many in the anti-GMO movement Monsanto does all of this inorder to sell you a product that (insert the anti-GMO claim of your choice).

On April 15 one of the worst terrorist attacks in the U.S. since the 9/11 attacks occurred at one of the largest sporting events in the U.S., the Boston Marathon. Three people were killed, and 264 people were injured, many of who also lost limbs, or were otherwise permanently maimed in some way. Also, like clock work, conspiracy theories about the bombing started to be posted all over the internet within minutes of the attack.

The most common of the claims were that it was a false flag attack, and then later de-evolved into stranger conspiracy theories in that both the suspects, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, were under some kind of government mind control, right on down to the most absurd claim of there being no attack at all and that the whole thing was staged and that no one was actually hurt or killed.

Besides the fact that all of these claims were absurd on face value alone and were quickly debunked, they were also very disrespectful and just plain disgusting.

Over the summer actress Amanda Bynes began engaging in behavior that ranged from bizarre to down right dangerous. This behavior of her’s eventually lead to her being involuntarily committed into psychiatric care.

Now to most people this looks like a simple enough case of a young woman whom is mentally ill and whom’s mental illness has caused her to act out in bizarre and dangerous ways. To a conspiracy theorist on the other hand it’s a clear case of Illuminati mind control.

The main theory that is going around is that Amanda was being groomed by the Illuminati as part of a youth indoctrination program, and that she had decided to break away from them. When Amanda did allegedly break away from them one of two things happen: Either that the indoctrination was so intense that she could not function on her own and her mind snapped, or she was driven insane via remote mind control.

While this explanation kind of makes sense in a weird way, the one theory behind her behavior that makes even more sense is that she is either schizophrenic or bi-polar. Combined with her age, and her escalating erratic behavior over the past few years, this makes a lot more sense than a couple of conspiracy theories that range from being far fetched to pretty much impossible.

When the Xbox One and all of it’s feature were announced there were many concerns (some legit, some not) but one of the biggest concerns that in itself became a conspiracy theory is that the new gaming counsel (through it’s inbuilt motion sensing Kinect system) can see you naked, even with your clothes on. The reason behind this claim is due to a photo of a test subject seen through the view of the Kinect that allegedly shows his ding-dong, despite the fact that he is wearing clothes.

As it turns out that wasn’t the man’s private parts, but was actually a fold in his pants that people mistook for his you-know-what. Although it should be noted that the Xbox One can see you naked… if you’re actually playing a video game infront of it while naked (and if that’s your thing then have fun playing with it… the Xbox One I mean).

Modern conspiracy movements come and go so quickly that it can be hard to keep up with the new threats and concepts that get tossed around social media and the water cooler. So here’s a quick and easy list of some of the basic ideas you’ll often see related to conspiracy theories and popular pseudoscience. And because everyone likes pedantic, grade-school learning tropes, I did it in the form of the alphabet.

A is for Agenda 21, a non-binding and unenforceable United Nations policy paper written over two decades ago, devoted to promoting sustainability and smart growth. Some conspiracy theorists, at the prompting of Glenn Beck, have decided that Agenda 21 is actually a plot to depopulate rural areas, enact a green genocide and cram the survivors into Soviet-style urban clusters. It’s really not, and you can read the “sinister plan” for yourself online.

B is for Bankster, a portmanteau of “banker” and “gangster.” This term has caught on as a reference to the wealthy financiers and global elites who are supposedly controlling every element of society and government, enslaving the rest of us through their octopus tentacles of Big Oil, Big Pharma and Big Government. Often, the term is modified as “foreign bankster,” which usually just means “Jews.”

C is for Chemtrail, a spray of noxious chemicals, biological agents meant to control the population, weather modification material or unspecified “toxins” left behind by airplanes acting under the control of the global elite. No compelling evidence of chemtrails exists, and almost everything used as proof of them is either fake or out of context. In reality, “chemtrails” are either contrails left by aircraft when the heat of their exhausts meets cold air, or simply unusual looking clouds.

D is for Denialism. No matter what beliefs are held by the mainstream and supported by solid evidence, you can always find someone who thinks we’re being lied to about them. Everything from the existence of AIDS to the moon landings to vaccine safety has an accompanying movement that says “everything we know is wrong” about these subjects, usually with nothing to prove it. Most of these movements are tied together, because if you’re going to be contrarian, you might as well be really contrarian.

E is for Energy. Many conspiracy theorists believe there is a massive plot by the government and oil companies to suppress free energy machines, which would break the oil industry’s grip on us and deliver unlimited power. As evidenced by the free availability of patents and myriad videos showing the non-existent miracles worked by these machines, this is not true. The laws of physics dictate that free energy can not exist, so there is no need to suppress it.

F is for False Flag. In political terms, a false flag is an action fabricated as a pretext for war. False flags are real things that have happened, but conspiracy believers see them in virtually every terrorist attack and shooting of the last century, all done as a pretext for Bankster-controlled politicians to make money and take away our rights. One false flag consistently cited by conspiracy theorists is Operation Northwoods, a US plan to gin up a war with Cuba. It was pooh-poohed by President Kennedy and never implemented.

HAARP, complete with SINISTER CLOUDS.

G is for Geoengineering. Like false flags, geoengineering is a real thing that has been turned into something else by conspiracy theorists. They see geoengineering as a way the global elite will reshape the planet to enslave us and keep us sick, using chemtrails, “weather warfare” and man-made natural disasters like typhoons and earthquakes. In reality, geoengineering is being studied as a way to reverse the effects of climate change (see Denialism.)

H is for HAARP, short for High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program. This was a research station in Alaska that used high frequency antennae to bounce radio signals off the ionosphere. Some see HAARP as a powerful weapon capable of weather modification, earthquakes, massive storms and electromagnetic blasts. HAARP has no such actual powers and ionospheric research has no relation to earthquakes or hurricanes. In addition, HAARP closed in March 2013, due to funding issues.

I is for Illuminati, a catch-all term for almost anyone wealthy, powerful or wealthy and powerful. Historically, the Bavarian Illuminati was a secret society founded in 1776 to oppose religious influence over secular life. It lasted less than a decade before being banned. The pop culture version of the Illuminati was remade from a combination of antisemitism, anti-Communism and fear of One World Government. No evidence exists that this Illuminati is real, despite virtually every celebrity, executive and politician posited to be a member.

Alex Jones: wrong pretty much all the time about pretty much everything.

J is for Jones, Alex. The popular radio host, film producer and founder of conspiracy clearing house Infowars.com is seen as the “face” of the conspiracy theory movement. Jones helped mainstream the view that a cadre of governments and businesses serve as a global elite, running the planet for their own benefit. His media platforms are a haven for those looking to “wake up” the rest of us to what’s “really going on,” despite being wrong pretty much all the time about pretty much everything. He’s also really entertaining to watch be interviewed.

K is for Kennedy, John, the center of a 50 year conspiracy theory regarding his assassination. Dozens of ideas have been put forth as to who “really” killed JFK, from the CIA to the Corsican Mafia to a nebulous group of businessmen to a Secret Service agent to Jackie Kennedy. Despite the weight of research on the subject (as many as 2,000 different books alone) and the staggering percentage of Americans who reject the “official story,” no theory has emerged with enough compelling evidence to displace Kennedy being shot by lone gunman Lee Harvey Oswald.

L is for Logical Fallacies, the poor arguments used in an attempt to make points lacking supporting evidence. It’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with the many fallacies used against skepticism, such as the Gish Gallop (238234 Reasons Vaccines Are Evil, And You Can’t Possibly Respond to Them All), the argument from authority (we should listen to Dr. Oz about nuclear power because he’s a doctor) and post hoc rationalization (I caught the flu after I got the flu shot, therefore the flu shot did it). Good lists of fallacies can be found here and here.

Whenever there is a disaster or notable tragedy in the world, the conspiracy theorists come crawling out of their darkened dens to offer up incredibly implausible explanations. The worst one, of late, was in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings. There was a theory going around, and widespread it was too, that the whole thing had been staged and all the folk who lost limbs were amputee actors. Really? Really? And the lone gunmen is almost always a CIA mind-controlled drone, activated by some remote control… and so on and so forth. We’ve all heard that it was George W. Bush who was behind the World Trade Centre holocaust.

I started snooping about the internet for others because although I’m often appalled at the incredulous nonsense, I am also fascinated by them. I’m fascinated to read fanatical rants that are so ‘out there’ that they become almost entertaining.

Here are a few doozies…

1.J Edgar Hoover organised a hit squad made up entirely of homosexuals to assassinate JFK. The rationale was that in the wake of the hit, police would disregard the flamboyantly dressed gay people because they would not be considered capable of committing such a violent act…I actually do think that the official story is a bit bogus but I’m not buying the Rainbow Army theory.

3.Sony Bono was murdered on the ski slope because he was going to run for president. Unlikely. He was probably just not looking where he was going.

4.Man did not walk on the moon. Man walked into a Hollywood studio for a photo shoot. I like to think we did walk on the moon. It looked like fun. I would like to move to Mars so walking on the moon seems like a good precursor for that. Also, if it was just a Hollywood stunt I would have thought they’d get ET in there. It was a bit too dull for a beat-up.

5. There is a New World Order running a global bank which aims to eliminate paper and coin currency in favour of digital banking and then one day in the not too distant future, they will shut down the system forcing citizens into slavery. It’s all about the Illuminati (isn’t it always?). This one is interesting. I like paper money. Particularly hundred dollar bills. I love the smell of money and I keep forgetting my online password. I will keep my money in shoe-boxes just in case. I have vivid nightmares about the Illuminati. They all have red hair!

6.According to Christine Fitzgerald, a former confidante of Princess Diana, the late Queen of Hearts told her quite seriously that the royal family are actually shape-shifting, reptilian aliens from a galaxy far, far away. Now that is gold.

If you read between the lines of your favorite novel, you might discover a crazy conspiracy theory. From Elizabethan England to the 21st century, people have made some pretty weird claims about books and the folks who wrote them, ranging from secret identities to dastardly deeds.

J.K. Rowling was just an average working mom who became a world-renowned, uber-wealthy author. At least, that’s what the Bloomsbury publishing company wants you to believe. According to Norwegian filmmaker Nine Grunfeld, there is no J.K. Rowling. The author never existed.

Grunfeld believes the Harry Potter books are just too successful to be the work of one woman. She’s suspicious of how Rowling can churn out seven Potter novels in 10 years, and how those books, written by a nobody, can sell more than 250 million copies worldwide. Grunfeld claims this whole operation is too professional, too slick to be the result of a single author. Instead, Harry Potter is a corporate creation, written by a team of writers a la the Nancy Drew series. The woman we know and love as J.K. Rowling is actually an actress paid to fool readers. Anybody else think Grunfeld is just a tiny bit jealous?

The Brontes were a pretty special family. Charlotte Bronte wrote Jane Eyre, Emily wrote Wuthering Heights, and Anne wrote the lesser-known The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Only Charlotte’s and Anne’s novels were successful in their day, but all three have since become classics of English literature. Sadly, none of the Brontes made it past their thirties, thanks to tuberculosis. But . . . was it really TB?

Criminologist James Tully, author of The Crimes of Charlotte Bronte, has a much more sinister theory. According to Tully, Charlotte was jealous of her sisters’ fame, so she teamed up with her father’s curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls, and poisoned Anne and Emily along with their brother Branwell. Thanks to their scheme, Emily and Branwell died in 1848, and Anne passed away in 1849, allowing the deadly duo to cash all their royalty checks. After the murders, Arthur and Charlotte were married, but Tully claims Nicholls double-crossed his wife. He poisoned Charlotte, thus eliminating all the Brontes, and kept all those fat checks for himself.

Tully tried to have his theories published as a nonfiction book, but couldn’t find a willing publisher. So he rewrote the whole thing as a novel, proving that sometimes truth isn’t necessarily stranger than fiction.

8 • Were J.R.R. Tolkien And C.S. Lewis Occultists?

J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis are two of the most influential fantasy authors of all time, and their novels are beloved across the world. However, several conspiracy theorists claim these two men were heavily involved in the occult and were priming their readers for a New World Order—the one conspiracy to rule them all.

For example, in The Lord of the Rings, the eye of Sauron supposedly represents the all-seeing eye of the Illuminati. Some theorists claim Gandalf symbolizes famous magician Aleister Crowley, and that Frodo is an “aspirant,” someone hoping to be initiated into Gandalf’s illuminated brotherhood of black magic. The infamous John Todd preached that Tolkien actually copied his novels from The Book of Shadows, a Wiccan text, and that his runes are really the witches’ alphabet.

To top it off, some claim the Illuminati uses rings to enslave people! In fact, the “One Ring” poem is allegedly an incantation used to control brainwashed servants. As proof, conspiracy theorists note that Tolkien taught at Oxford, a college obviously run by the Illuminati. They claim Tolkien was softening his readers’ resistance to the occult, preparing them for the coming Illuminati kingdom.

And what about Lewis? His novels are really Christian allegories, right? Well, conspiracy theorist Mary van Nattan says Aslan actually represents pagan solar deities. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe focuses on a land plunged into eternal winter. However, the wintry curse is broken by the return of Aslan, so he’s like the mid-winter solstice breaking through the winter nights. Van Hattan also points out that Aslan has golden fur, a golden face, and golden eyes. Guess what else is golden? The sun!

And going back to John Todd, he claims that Lewis is required reading if you ever want to join a coven of witches. So anyone wanting to practice witchcraft better head down to their local Christian bookstore.

As the father of the detective genre, it’s appropriate that Edgar Allan Poe’s death is a mystery. On October 3, 1849, Poe showed up in Baltimore, delirious and wearing someone else’s clothes. He died four days later, though no one is sure how. Some think he overdosed, some say he had diabetes, and some even blame rabies. It should come as no surprise that some say Poe was murdered.

One of the more prominent theories suggests that Poe was “cooped.” In the 1800s, when election season came around, gangs would round up men wandering the streets, beat them up, and get them drunk. The men would then be taken to polling booths and forced to vote for a particular candidate multiple times, rigging the election. To make sure their captives weren’t recognized, the kidnappers would force them to wear different clothes every time they cast a ballot. Some think this is why Poe showed up unhinged and wearing clothes that weren’t his.

Others suspect the murder was personal. As the story goes, Poe was involved with a woman who had some pretty possessive brothers. When they learned Poe was an alcoholic, they had a nice, long talk with the author and encouraged him to see other people. Evidently, they convinced him a little too thoroughly.

The most bizarre theory has Poe being murdered by the Masons. By exposing their evil deeds through short stories such as “The Cask of Amontillado” and “Never Bet the Devil Your Head,” Poe incurred their wrath and was murdered on his trip to Baltimore. However, most historians put little stock in this theory as it’s stark raven mad (sorry).

6 • Who Wrote Shakespeare’s Plays?

Shakespeare’s authorship has been questioned by crazies and scholars alike. Those who believe the man from Stratford-Upon-Avon was the sole author of works like Hamlet are known as Stratfordians. All those opposed are anti-Stratfordians, and this camp has attracted a surprising number of notable figures, such as Charlie Chaplin, Vanessa Redgrave, Sigmund Freud, Charles Dickens, and Orson Welles.

Conspiracy theorists have a problem believing the Bard penned his own poetry because he was a commoner. The son of a glover and wool-smuggler, Shakespeare was just an actor who didn’t even go to college. How could this guy write some of the most beautiful prose in the English language? He didn’t hang out with royalty, and he’d never traveled outside of England, so how could he write about those topics with such depth and precision? Anti-Stratfordians think Shakespeare was just too ignorant to write a play like King Lear. Instead, the author had to be someone with education and class. So who was the man behind the man?

Anti-Stratfordians have several candidates, the most popular being Christopher Marlowe, Edward de Vere, and Sir Francis Bacon. Marlowe was a famous playwright who was murdered in a bar fight before many of Shakespeare’s plays were written, but according to conspiracy theorists, he actually survived. As he was a spy for the Crown, Marlowe was smuggled into France where he spent the rest of his life writing Shakespeare’s canon.

The second candidate, de Vere, was the 17th Earl of Oxford and has the support of the Roland Emmerich film Anonymous. However, de Vere also died before plays like Macbeth and The Tempest were even written.

The Francis Bacon theory is the most plausible, mostly because he wasn’t dead at the time. Some believe he was the sole author of Shakespeare’s plays while others think he was one member of a dramatist conspiracy. Mark Twain favored the Bacon hypothesis and believed you could find the words “Francisco Bacono” hidden in Shakespeare’s First Folio. But if you think these suspects are just a little too usual, then how about Queen Elizabeth I? Some actually believe the Virgin Queen penned Shakespeare’s words. It seems some will always wonder if Shakespeare achieved greatness or had it thrust upon him.

The grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza, where the 1963 assasination of US President John F. Kennedy took place in Dallas.

We’re approaching the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, an event that wrenched this nation and spawned countless conspiracy theories. Was Kennedy killed by the Cubans? The CIA? The Mafia? The military-industrial complex? Time to spread your blanket on a grassy knoll and examine these 10 conspiracy theories:

1 • Some Pakistanis doubt the story of Malala Yousafzai, the teenager who received worldwide support after she was shot and wounded by the Taliban for promoting the education of girls. Suspicion that she is a CIA plant or a greedy hoaxer is so common in Pakistan that a journalist there ridiculed doubters with a satirical piece revealing that Malala’s “real name was Jane” and that the DNA in her earwax showed that she was “probably from Poland.” But other media outlets missed the joke, citing the report as yet more evidence of the Malala plot.

2 • Psychologists say the best predictor for someone believing a conspiracy theory is belief in other theories, even if they’re contradictory. Researchers at the University of Kent in England found that survey respondents who believed that Osama bin Laden died long before the U.S. Navy SEAL attack in May 2011 were actually more likely to also agree with the theory that he was still alive.

3 • The Illuminati was a Bavarian secret society founded by Adam Weishaupt in the late 18th century that was extinguished within a few years. Or was it? Conspiracy theorists believe the Illuminati remains alive and is bent on world conquest. It’s certainly bent on domination of book lists, with Dan Brown’s novels as best-sellers, and other authors offering such titles as “Hip-Hop Illuminati: How and Why the Illuminati Took Over Hip-Hop” and “Mary Todd Lincoln and the Illuminati.” Then there’s the video “Die America Die!: The Illuminati Plan to Murder America, Confiscate Its Wealth, and Make Red China Leader of the New World Order.”

4 • The struggling New York Knicks desperately needed the NBA’s No. 1 draft pick in 1985, certain to be Georgetown’s Patrick Ewing. But seven teams were in the running, with the draft order determined by Commissioner David Stern picking envelopes out of a bowl. When the Knicks won the top pick, the “Frozen Envelope Theory” was born. Some suspect that the Knicks’ envelope was chilled so Stern could identify it by touch. Others think a corner of the envelope was bent for the same purpose. But no one has ever proved anything.

US radio host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones

5 • Conspiracy theories are big business. Alex Jones is an Austin, Texas-based talk radio host with millions of listeners over the airwaves and on the Internet who peddles apocalyptic tales of doom. He believes the U.S. government was behind the Oklahoma City bombing, the 9/11 attacks and the Boston Marathon bombings. As Jones spouts his dire warnings, his main advertising sponsor is a gold company called Midas Resources, which benefits from such hysteria as people seek out the traditional financial safety of precious metals. Midas Resources is owned by Ted Anderson, who also owns Genesis Communications — the network that carries Jones.

If you’re someone that makes a hobby of investigating conspiracy theories, you will eventually be lead to one place: Youtube.

Youtube seems to the gathering center conspiracy theorists on the internet due to the huge amount a conspiracy theory videos on that website (and I mean huge).

Now there are a lot of things that I have noticed about conspiracy theorists on Youtube that I could talk about, but I have narrowed it down to five different things.

So here are five things that I’ve noticed about conspiracy theorists on Youtube:

5. They can come up with some pretty bizarre conspiracy theories.

If you want to find a really bizarre conspiracy theory, then there is no better place to look than Youtube, because the conspiracy theorists on that website can come up with some very bizarre conspiracy theories. In fact some of the weirdest conspiracy theories that I have ever heard of are from videos on Youtube.

These conspiracy theories on Youtube can get so strange, and combined with a person’s own behavior either in a video, or in the comments section, that it makes one wonder if that person is either a poe, or a fraud that is looking for attention (or to scam people), or severely mentally ill. In fact some conspiracy theorist on Youtube have been proven to be either mentally ill or frauds.

Some of these videos are so bizarre that I’ve had to stop watching them at times because I felt that it was driving me crazy (mostly rage) and making me want to destroy my computer in frustration over not only how some one could come up with some thing that crazy and stupid, but also in frustration over why Youtube would allow such a video to stay on the website.

If such videos make me nearly go crazy then I can’t imagine what they do to people who take these videos seriously.

4. Their videos can be extremely long.

Sometimes a conspiracy theorist’s video on Youtube can be short, sometimes they can be half an hour long, and sometimes they can go on for hours and hours.

Some of the longest videos that I have ever seen on Youtube have been from conspiracy theorists, and I’m not talking about an hour or two long. Some of these videos can be three to four to six hours long. In fact I think the longest one I have ever seen (I didn’t actually watch it, I just noted the time) was forty hours long!

The only way someone could watch such videos is if they were unemployed and/or had no life what so ever. They would have to spend all of their time infront of a computer watching these poorly made and researched Youtube videos which would become essentially their only source of information about the world…

Besides just making abnormally long videos, conspiracy theorists on Youtube also tend to do this:

3. They create videos of an event quickly after an event happens.

Thanks mostly due to cheap (many times free), widely available, and easy to use video capturing and editing software, conspiracy theorist can now create videos at astonishingly amazing speeds after some event happens, sometimes even within hours of an event happening.

An all-seeing eye atop a pyramid is supposedly a symbol for the secret society known as the Illuminati.

The Illuminati was an 18th-century secret society made up of numerous influential intellectuals and freethinkers of the time.

The organization, which is also known as the Bavarian Illuminati, opposed the Roman Catholic Church’s control over philosophy and science; promoted the education of women and their treatment as equals; sought to “enlighten” people’s minds and free them from superstitions and prejudices; and tried to reduce the oppression of the state.

Weishaupt was vocally critical of the “intolerance and bigotry” of the church, which, at the time, held strong influence over the University of Ingolstadt, as well the politics and government of Bavaria.

His criticisms resulted in clashes with the Jesuits, leading Weishaupt to conclude that a secret organization of liberal-minded individuals was necessary to outwit the “enemies of reason.” He initially sought to join one of the Freemason lodges, but lacked the funds to do so and felt the order was too well-known to the general public.

So, on May 1, 1776, Weishaupt formed the Order of the Illuminati with four other members.

The Illumanti grew quickly, gaining some 2,000 members from countries throughout Europe, including France, Poland, Hungary and Italy. This rapid expansion was largely due to . . .

In 1999 one of the best (and perhaps strangest) science fiction films premiered in theaters. That film of course is The Matrix.

The film itself was visually stunning, it’s fight screens were so awesome that other films have duplicated the same style in their fight scenes, and it had that was really unique story line… and made anyone who watched the film not sleep for a few days.

The film itself also had multiple concepts in it that many conspiracy theorists tend to use in their beliefs.

In fact many concepts from the film have either inspired conspiracy theorists in their and terminology and their beliefs, or were inspired by conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists, such as:

The world as we know it is a lie.

The first concept in “The Matrix” that many conspiracy theorists hold near and dear to them is that the world as we know it is just one giant lie, and that everything we know is fake and intentionally constructed in order to fool the masses.

In the movie Neo is told that the world is a lie, and is eventually shown that the whole world that he knew is a computer generated simulation. While most conspiracy theorist don’t go as far to say that our world is a computer generated simulation (although some do) many do think that everything we know is just one well constructed lie, and that all of our history has been guided and constructed by some force that we don’t know about.

Only people who “wake up” can know the “truth”.

In the movie Neo is told that in order to know the truth about the world that he would basically have to “wake up”, which is something that conspiracy theorists tell people all the time that they need to do (especially when they express doubt in the conspiracy theorist’s claims).

Whether the concept of “waking up” came from the movie or not, anytime one argues with a conspiracy theorist (especially on the internet) often the conspiracy theorist will tell the person to WAKE UP to the “truth” (whatever that may be for the conspiracy theorist).

People must choose if they are to “wake up” or not.

Half way through the movie Neo is given a choice about whether he wants to find out what the Matrix is in the infamous “blue pill, red pill” screen. In the screen Neo is given the choice of taking a blue pill and continuing life as he knows it, or taking the red pill and finding out the truth about the world.

This screen is so infamous that many conspiracy theorists now commonly reference to the blue pill and red pill when trying to convince someone that the conspiracy theory that they are promoting is real, and that the only way that the average person can learn about what is really going on in the world (at least from the conspiracy theorist perspective) is that they must “choose” to “take the red pill”, or that they must choose to “wake up”.

A few months ago I did one of these “5 Things I’ve noticed about…” articles on the people in the 9/11 Truth Movement, and it had me thinking to myself “what about the conspiracy theories that the people in the 9/11 Truth Movements promote?”

So what about those conspiracy theories, and what are some of the biggest things about them that just stand out? Well, I’ve noticed a lot of things about them, and I’ve narrowed them down to five different things.

So here are five things I’ve noticed about 9/11 conspiracy theories:

5. There are a lot of them.

Probably one of the biggest problems with the 9/11 conspiracy theories is that there are more than one of them, instead of just one that the people who believe in and focus on.

For some people these can be confusing not only because they are all very different, but they are mostly not even connected to one another.

Not only can they be confusing, but they are also progressively more bizarre as well.

There is the let it happen theory, the controlled demolition theory, the drone plane theory, the nuke theory, and even the no plane/space lasers (which is so bizarre a person in the 9/11 Truth Movement debunked it).

I guess you say that the 9/11 conspiracy theories are a lot like the JFK assassination conspiracy theories in that not only are there more than one theory to what happened, but also because…

4. There is apparently more than one perpetrator.

Besides there just being more than one 9/11 conspiracy theory, according to these conspiracy theories, there is no solid conclusion on who the “real” perpetrator is.

Some people claim that it was Al-Qaida, it’s just that those in the government allowed them to attack. Some people say that it was a collaboration between the government and Al-Qaida. Some people believe it was just the government, or Israel, or the Illuminati, or someone else entirely.

It just seems like none of these conspiracy theorists who claim that 9/11 was an inside job can agree upon who did it, and how they did it. Of course that isn’t very surprising to me, because…

They are of course not the only one’s who promote the 9/11 conspiracy theories, but they are some of the biggest ones, and many of the other promoters of the 9/11 conspiracy theories are just as nutty (or possibly fraudulent) as these guys.

Conspiracy theories are an unfortunate, paranoid and counterfactual outgrowth of any national tragedy. But in the aftermath of the mass shooting at Navy Yard, so-called “truthers” found some hard proof that something was off: The attack happened on Sept. 16, but both ABC.com and British Columbia’s Kelowna Daily Courier published stories dated the day before.

Thousands of people, including some of the Internet’s most popular conspiracy theorists, seized on the time stamps as evidence of a vast government conspiracy to orchestrate tragedies and clamp down on gun rights in the aftermath. They have other “proof” too, of course — conjecture about “crisis actors” and John Wilkes Booth and the two rumored shooters who didn’t end up being part of Aaron Alexis’s plot. But the time stamp issue is the foundation of many of the more popular videos circulating on YouTube, Facebook and that seedy corner of the Internet where people debate the Illuminati and UFOs.

“Now we have what might be the best smoking gun evidence yet, and it is time-stamped from September 15,” rails the popular conspiracy vlogger Dahboo77 in a YouTube video that has been viewed more than 90,000 times. “These guys must have put this into the system right before midnight, right before they left the office, on the 15th. And they knew it” — “it” being the Navy Yard rampage, hours before it happened.

The reality is, of course, a little more mundane: Both sites incorrectly ingested a feed from the Associated Press, which caused their AP stories to display the wrong time stamps.

While I did touch upon ten of what I considered to be biggest lies, I still felt there were more lies that people in the 9/11 Truth Movement promoted that still needed to be addressed.

So, I have put together another list of ten more lies that Truther tells:

10. Nothing hit World Trade Center 7.

Actually something did hit World Trade Center 7… a skyscraper.

To be more precise falling debris from World Trade Center 1 hit World Trade Center 7 and caused huge amounts of damage to the lower floors of the building. The combination of that, and the fact that the building had been on fire for hours caused the building to collapse.

9. Only two buildings were hit, but three were destroyed.

This is not true. In fact more than three building were destroyed that day. World Trade Center 3, 4, 5, and 6 were heavily damaged that day and what was left of them had to be torn down because they could not be repaired.

Also, many other buildings around the World Trade Center were damaged as well.

8. A nuclear bomb brought down the towers.

If this was true then this would be the easiest one to prove, as all you would have to do is go down to the World Trade Center site with a Geiger counter and one would easily find large amounts of radiation there.

Also, lower Manhattan would be uninhabitable right now due to that radiation, plus the destruction caused would have been far greater, and a lot more people would have died, either from the initial blast from the weapon, or from the radiation and radioactive fall out.

Plus, there would have been an obvious flash some what similar to the Sun when the device went, and there would have been no way to hide that.

7. The towers were reduced to dust and gravel.

Primarily promoted by followers of Judy Wood and those that believe in her theory that the towers were brought down high energy lasers, their claims are that the towers were reduced to dust and gravel by these alleged lasers.

While the collapse of the towers did create a lot of dust and gravel, it also left large chunks of concrete, long pieces of steel beams, and even places where pieces of the outer wall several stories high still stood.

6. Israel did it.

Besides the fact that there is no evidence what so ever that Israel did this, the fact is that Israel had no reason to do something like this.

The United States is Israel’s biggest supporter, and President George W. Bush was one of Israel’s strongest supporters at that.

To simply put, the people in charge of Israel would have had to have lost their minds to have done something like that. Not only would they have been risking losing support from the United States, but also risked going war with the United States in order to get more support from the United States.